i wish my name still existed in your vocabulary
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: Love makes us all liars. klaroline


word definitions come from the webster's dictionary.

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_**fam·i·ly [fam-uh-lee, fam-lee] plural fam·i·lies, adjective, noun**_**:** a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not; any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

He's heard this word many times in many different circumstance, perhaps abused and Christ knows he's wagered it as ransom indefinitely when the world is closing in. Father, mother, brother, sister, the words sound foreign on his tongue sometimes like bitter ends to a mean that was once something to be celebrated and now carries more so as a burden that cannot be lifted, rather eternally hangs in the veiled balance between life and death, resolution and conflict.

Family, he says with Elijah's hand in his chest, quickening around his dead beating heart. Family, he says stabbing Rebekah through her tinsel trimmed skirts and watching her ruby lips slacken in disbelief. Family, he says as Kol crumbles to ash before his bottle green eyes and every curse dies on delivery.

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_**al·ways [awl-weyz, -weez]**__**adverb**_**:** forever.

His hands are soiled with death and his locks of honeyed wheat hang in his face when this word falls from his brother's mouth and lands on listening and abiding ears of younger siblings. Well, they only have an eternity to make up for it.

Always, he growls as Elijah takes Katerina's heart and runs like the wind, Bulgarian howling in his ear drums. Always, he growls as Rebekah kisses Marcel and trades her emotions like playing cards less than a century later for a Salvatore with cat green eyes and a smirk that sends his anger into overdrive as she makes yet another choice against him. Always, he growls as Finn pricks his finger and signs his name in blood for their extinction.

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_**vam·pire [vam-pahyuhr] noun**_**:** a preternatural being, commonly believed to be a reanimated corpse, that is said to suck the blood of sleeping persons at night; a person who preys ruthlessly upon others; extortionist.

_**o·rig·i·nal [uh-rij-uh-nl] adjective**_**:** a thing at its beginning; created, undertaken, or presented for the first time.

_I'm an Original,_ he tells his peons and you can hear the capitalization in his voice, how the dulcet tones roam over his words like flowing honey. The very first of the vampire race that created and sired and bred this beautiful and wondrous creature, yes, you can thank him, for that inhuman ability to thrive and do it better than any other species in the entire goddamn world.

The first of our kind, he tells the girl with the stolen face and pumping heart as she stares him down with her ambered doe eyes. The original species of vampires created as a superior race, he overhears Elijah telling one of the Salvatores, their brow furrowed deep into the forehead. The reason you all exist the way that you do, he listens to Katerina whisper hushed to the wild eyed beauty with blonde ringlets cascading on her porcelain collarbone.

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_**hu·man·i·ty [hyoo-man-i-tee or, often, yoo-] noun**__, plural hu·man·i·ties: _the quality or condition of being human.

Humanity is irrelevant.

Let's skip this verse, he lectures himself jealousy panging in his stomach as the beautifully blue eyed bus boy's heart ratchets up a beat when his younger sister struts by the bar, all long locks of blonde and wide smiles. I am better than a human, he demands, the siren's hands hot on his back, sweat pouring over the crevices of skin and bones and the pain, Christ the pain, absolves with her lavender and honey essence wrapping him protectively. I do not miss it, he lies, throwing back tumbler after tumbler of scotch, Stefan's refusal stinging in his ears not an hour earlier.

Klaus knows, remembers what it feels like. His hands woven through the stalks of violet vervain at the foot of a ghastly white oak, sunshine warming his face, slipping in the closed slits of his bottle green eyes, his younger brother's laughter—oh god, how he chokes on the name—high in his throat and a thousand years of ruin yet to follow that he wasn't even sure he had wanted in the offset.

Once pertinent, not anymore. It died with him the first time.

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_**friend**__** [frend]**_ _**noun**_**: **a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard, a person who gives assistance.

The doppelganger has the witch and her. The elder Salvatore has the history expert. The bus boy has the hunter and the hybrid. And Klaus, he_ had_ the younger Salvatore.

There was once a time where _inseparable _used to be the description he would use and_ brother_ was another word for another man not related by blood. Days and nights with champagne flutes and long lists of death threats over kindred laughter, kind words and encouragement. Something, someone to look forward to sharing himself with for the first time in a long time, so when he gets another opportunity that sounds suspiciously unlike the first go-round, he seizes.

_We used to be friends_, the younger brother says, disbelief thick on his tongue, nimble fingers tracing a lifetime a hundred years old with whiskey laced comments and blood stained memories, his glassy green eyes recalling, swift unforgotten smile tickling the left cheek of his face. Klaus grins in reply, stretching closed mouthed over his sculpted face, _yes, yes we were, we are_, he curses with a dagger clipping the skin of his neck and Stefan cursing under his breath, chips of hate flashing in those unearthly evergreen orbs.

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_**art**__** [ahrt] **__**noun**__**: **_the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful,

appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

He doesn't have many productive outlets. Most of them involve drinking too much booze, killing too many people, or throwing too many priceless heirlooms across the room at his siblings. To say that his emotions and actions are flight risks is being kind unless there's a brush in his hands.

His father hated him painting. His oils get all over his hands, tinting his tawny skin a beautiful array of violent indigos and blinding sunshine yellows, crisp apple reds and fall face into them greens. The blood orange is striking against the boiling pink, streaks of gold faded away into the background, lost in the sea of brush strokes and swipes of his fingertips, the prints forever indented in the mess he spent all Thursday afternoon creating.

Art is tactile, he considers watching the flicker of firelight over his dead brother's sallow cheekbones, Kol's youth frozen for a millennium in time. Art is unforgiving, he acknowledges with the way the vervain burns the delicate wrists of the doppelganger with the fierce eyes and venomous mouth as she tries to run time and time again. Art is the only pure thing in the world, he rashly decides admiring the way her curls tumble from the crown of her blonde head, onto her collarbone and down uneven spirals her naked back.

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_**thank-you **__**[**__**thangk**__**-yoo] **__**adjective**__**:**_expressing one's gratitude or thanks.

He can count on his hands the number of times he has heard these words uttered for his sake.

Stefan with his crooked cream colored bow tie in a loose knot, streams of cocoa hair dashing in downcast bottle green eyes, sincere smile on his mouth, hand clasped on his shoulder in solidarity. The flash of a camera forever cementing that memory into place, tucked neatly away in a Chicago cabinet and what seems like a thousand lifetimes ago.

His older brother with the slightest nod of his head, stiffly and somewhat transparent as he acknowledges his baby brother. It's a dim winter night all blue velvet skies and smatterings of constellations littering the heavens. It's the only time Elijah ever expresses appreciation to him in a millennia.

Hands tangled in a mess of buttercream curls, wild eyes, and furtive reams of tension suffocate, as he briefly wonders if this is what forgiveness feels like. For her, he's one chapter. For him, she's the whole damn book. The beautiful lilt of her voice slays him, the earnestness of those words on the curl of her tongue, expelled from her tulip mouth, her breath mixing with his. He'll count it time and time over.

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_beau·ti·ful __[__byoo__-t__uh__-f__uh__l__]__adjective__:_ having beauty; possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind.

_**strong **__**[strawng, strong] **__**adjective: **_of great moral power, firmness, or courage.

_light __[__lahyt__]__noun__: _an illuminating agent or source, the radiance or illumination from a particular source.

Other words come to mind as well that normally he wouldn't even have in the same category.

She is young and reckless, foolish and disobedient. She loves too easily and without precaution, throws herself in at full force never bothering to stop and look to survey the damage. She is careless with her own happiness, careless with her feelings for others, careless with her ability to give herself away till there is nothing left.

She is enrapturing. She is unadulterated. She is what he would have been before he gave away too much and lost everything else. She is what he would have been before he had the ordeal in the tragedy of being alive. She is the exception that he has spent his entire life searching for.

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_**con·fes·sion **__**[k**__**uh**__**n-**__**fesh**__**-**__**uh**__**n] **__**noun**__: _acknowledgment; avowal; admission.

_People who do terrible things are just terrible people_, she crassly spits.

_I did once when I thought he was worth it_, spews out, ugly syllables on her tongue.

_I should have turned my back on you ages ago_, she screeches, voice bouncing off the vaulted ceilings.

Each time he grapples for a hidden truth, the way her eyes crinkle in the corners like sequined sapphires glinting in the midafternoon sunshine, a hint of a grin on the lips playing him time in and time out, deception of her fingers striking against his freckled skin. And each time, he comes away with nothing at all.

_I know that you're in love with me_, she barely stutters, the vowels getting lost in her throat. Jerking his gaze away from her form on the couch, he swallows hard, and turns his back, feeling her bore those eyes on his collarbone. Fiercely, he whirls frontwards and furiously whooshes to her side, anger singeing boiling in his bloodstream.

Nevermind it all, there's only one he really cares about: _I will be honest with you. _

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_**same **__**[seym] **__**adjective **__**: **_being one or identical though having different names, aspects, etc, unchanged in character, condition.

One of a kind, unique in every way, not even closely similar to any other being. Or so he thought.

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_**king **__**[king] **__**noun: **_a male sovereign or monarch; a man who holds by life tenure, and usually by hereditary right, the chief

authority over a country and people.

A ruler can either be feared or loved. Most days it is neither. His sister says his title like a curse and Kol simpers at his reflection in the mirror, forever unchanged, forever young and stupid. Klaus isn't naïve enough to know he can rule with love as he is not capable no matter how much he would like to be. Years wasted and in vain wanting and heaving for an affection that is more likely to get him ruined than killed, and he'd rather be killed.

I am the ruler, he besmirches, eyes ever wary on the minions Marcel has plucked and provided from the Mississippi delta that conspire when his back is turned. You cannot subdue me, he thunders, hand wrapped tightly around Carol Lockwood's neck as he forces her under the spring sky into oblivion of lukewarm crystal blue. At times the crown shakes and twitters atop his honeyed head though it never falls, but no bother, who could take it anyway.

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_**dare **__**[dair]**__**verb (used without object): **_to have the boldness to try; venture; hazard; to meet defiantly; face courageously; to challenge or provoke (a person) into a demonstration of courage; defy.

All his existence has been lying on dares of chances that he feigned to make whenever necessary. He dares to allow his siblings to live knowing that at any moment they might stage a coup against him for all the silver daggers he has wedged betwixt their rib bones and heart valves. He dares to let his mother hold his hand and pretend for all fuck sake that she still loves him like the scared terrified young boy that once picked all the yellow poppies in the field outside their cottage. He dares to trust Stefan Salvatore and ends up with a flaming white oak stake lodged in his abdomen and judging eyes casting shadows over his corpse.

Defying the world and everyone in it, meeting challenges that no one believes he can conquer, can accomplish, he kicks over with his boots and tramples underfoot. No one chances anything with him for fear that he will overtake and win and lord knows we cannot have that. Klaus gambles with others' lives like poker chips cast off to a pile of fuckitall, not caring and then she comes along and she beats him at his own game.

He. is. livid. (And completely, wholly, utterly, infinitely impressed for the first time since he can recall.)

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_**be·tray **__**[bih-**__**trey**__**]**__**verb (used with object)**_: to deliver or expose to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty; to disappoint the hopes or expectations of.

There is enough fodder in this tangle of letters for him to write epic essays and trilogies and more than he would ever want to because it seems that everywhere he turns someone is stabbing him, whether it be in the front, the side, or the back not of import.

Sister and brother die on his lips with Elijah's fingers wound in the woman's hair that claims to really keep her affections on the floor of his bedroom, and Rebekah has the stench of lies and loves forlorn lost that he gags on with one hand crisply around her pretty little neck. Chains wind their way over his wrists clamped shut, heckles and taunts loud and boisterous.

He has been here more times than he can count. The chant merciless in his head as she continues to surprise. It's the most loyalty he has ever known even if he isn't sure what he is depending on.

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_prom·ise __[__prom__is__]__noun: _a declaration that something will or will not be done, given, etc., by one; something that has the effect of an express assurance; indication of what may be expected.

Klaus makes so many he half expects them start reverting the moment that they aren't fulfilled. Highly ironic though, he intends to keep every single blessed one, until he doesn't. One that he will allow to fall through his fingertips, crumble into broken pieces, bury undated and without repose.

The past tryst sounds like a prayer in his mouth, the one lie he told candy coated and dipped in honey, scented with sex and lavender and silence. Leaving is a four letter word. And leaving her without the intention of forever is like dropping the goddamn f bomb in the Vatican.

Love makes us liars.

(But I don't love. Until now, until her. )

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_last __[__last, lahst__] __adjective__:_occurring or coming after all others, as in time, order, or place; being the only one remaining; final, ultimate or conclusive; definitive. If anyone were to dust his heart, if he even has one, for fingerprints, they'd only find one set. Imprinted upon it like handprints in cement, permanent and everlasting, a kind of forever that carried into something like eternity that even he, the one that cannot be killed, cannot understand. He knows so many facts, has seen more than the world ever intended to offer to any one being , but there will always be one remained unseen.

He always will have wanted to kiss her longer, to know that the last set of lips upon his own were the ones that he would until the end of an age lock into, that fit with precision, without error, without disdain from anyone but himself. This kind of scarring can't be washed away or faded with time, it can only root deeper, be more a part of him than most before.

Infinity began and ended with a twice turned seventeen year old girl during the tenth century of his merciless deign of existence. All genuine beauty and ear splitting laughter and grins that swallowed her face whole. She's intimidating and coarse and grating, but also fair and stunning and what he wished that he could be on the best day of his human life ages ago.

_He's your first love. I intend to be your last. However long it takes. _

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_**Car·o·line **__**[**__**kar**__**-**__**uh**__**-lahyn, -lin] **__**adjective. **_

He'll come back.

Maybe.

He'll come back. For you.

You alone.


End file.
